


tomorrow morning has been cancelled

by postcardmystery



Category: Slings & Arrows
Genre: M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Self-Harm, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-07
Updated: 2013-02-07
Packaged: 2017-11-28 13:20:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/674845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postcardmystery/pseuds/postcardmystery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>“Fucking hell,” says Geoffrey, his feet up on the desk, “Oliver really <i>doesn’t</i> have any taste.”</p>
  <p>“Well, I don’t really see how you can object,” says Darren, careful to make sure that his voice doesn’t shake, “you’re <i>dead</i>.”</p>
</blockquote>In which Oliver is not the ghost, Geoffrey is not the one haunted-- and come on now, you know what they say about <i>hauntings</i>.
            </blockquote>





	tomorrow morning has been cancelled

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for suicide, self-harm, and mental illness (bipolar disorder).

Darren doesn’t find out that Geoffrey’s dead until three days after the fact. He isn’t even sure why Oliver called him, except out of some sick sense of obligation that Darren’s never going to understand; Oliver Welles was the worst thing that ever happened to Gefforey Tennant. He answers the phone because he’s somewhere in Croatia and no one speaks any fucking English, or any of the five assorted other languages Darren whips out on occasions like this one. It never does to be ignorant, and it’s even worse to be  _dull_ , after all.  
  
“Hello,” he says, when he picks up the phone, because if they aren’t going to understand him anyway it doesn’t matter what language he says it in.  
  
“Darren?” says a voice that Darren could have gone forever without hearing, “There was no other way to reach you, I’m so sorry I had to do this over the phone, but, er, well. Geoffrey’s dead.”  
  
There is probably more to the conversation than that; but that’s all Darren takes away. That, and a slight tremor in his fingers that becomes chain smoking that becomes vomiting, that becomes watching the sun rise over Zagreb, and feeling a little like he’s dying, but, as he should know better than ever, he isn’t.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
He flies back to Canada for the funeral, what there is of it, anyway. It’s purely orchestrated by Oliver, full of sound and fury and everything that would have made Geoffrey seethe with not-so-well-hidden rage. Geoffrey is painted as a legend, and not the man in constant fall who slit his wrists in his tiny apartment in New Burbage, cracking for the last time under the tyranny of Oliver Welles, or  _Hamlet_ , or both.  
  
Oliver gives the eulogy, but of course, and Darren tunes most of it out. He watches Ellen, instead, because there’s an echo of something in her that he recognises. She knows that she’s supposed to cry, but she can’t muster it. She’s a diva defeated, so numb with her grief that she barely moves through the hour-long service. Darren looks down at his hands, clad in black leather, and does not cry, either.  
  
He sees him when he’s leaving, leaning up against the door of the church, like he was there all along, (and maybe he was, that’d be just  _fucking_  like him, Darren knows).  
  
“Like a moth to a flame,” says Geoffrey, and Darren doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, just stares, as Geoffrey flicks that decorative razor blade of his between his teeth, continues, “there’s nothing quite like a good entrance, eh?”  
  
“Fuck,” mutters Darren, and Geoffrey steps forward, wearing his very worst smile, says, “Do something, you bastard, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”  
  
Darren closes his eyes for a very, very long time, and when he opens them, Geoffrey’s gone. He can’t comfort himself; he doesn’t think that means very much. Darren was never going to go mad the way Geoffrey went mad, no split right down the centre for him. But, well. Your heart ripped out, dribs and drabs, who’s to say what’s worse? ( _Oh_ , but Darren knows the answer to that, too.)  
  
Darren leaves the church without speaking to anyone. He’s very adamant about that, just, sadly, the universe does not appear to have agreed with him on that particular point.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Darren wakes up the next morning in New Burbage, and Geoffrey isn’t there, which is good. There’s a message from Oliver Welles for him at reception, however, which isn’t good at all.  
  
Darren calls him on his room phone, sitting on the bed in nothing but his underwear, smoking endless Gauloises and trying not to think about tomorrow, or the day after that, or the day after that.  
  
“Oh, Darren!” says Oliver, “I’m so glad that you didn’t leave, I was hoping I could have a word about something.”  
  
“About what,” says Darren, flat and without a question mark. There’s a time for performance, and there’s a time for not giving a shit, and the day after Geoffrey Tennant’s funeral is unquestionably the latter.  
  
“Well, as you know, I am a board member now,” says Oliver, and Darren inhales furiously, can already see where this is going, “and we will be requiring a new artistic director--”  
  
“Why the fuck not,” says Darren, and doesn’t listen to Oliver’s well-crafted, utterly empty flattery. Oliver has always hated him, a fact to which Geoffrey was blind. Darren knows very well why Oliver hates him. The fact that Geoffrey didn’t notice, well. Geoffrey might have been the most perceptive person Darren’s ever known, but he has his blind spots.  _Had_ , thinks Darren, and stubs his cigarette out on the sheets with a sharp stab, half-hoping they’ll set alight. They don’t, so he lights another, leans back, and continues to try very hard to not think about anything at all.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
He’s not even a little bit surprised when he opens the door and finds Geoffrey waiting for him. He knows enough to know that this used to be Oliver’s office, because Oliver was a director who liked to bring you into his inner sanctum before a bollocking. (Darren never did want to follow anyone’s direction but his own.) It’s all about the illusion of power, the way Oliver always is.  
  
“Fucking hell,” says Geoffrey, his feet up on the desk, “Oliver really  _doesn’t_  have any taste.”  
  
“Well, I don’t really see how you can object,” says Darren, careful to make sure that his voice doesn’t shake, “you’re  _dead_.”  
  
As soon as he’s said it, he wishes he hadn’t. This office has always been about power, and he just handed the power squarely to Geoffrey, or to this delusion that talks with Geoffrey’s voice, whichever.  
  
“And yet,” says Geoffrey, waving a demonstrative hand, tapping that blasted ever-present blunted razorblade of his on the desk with the other.  
  
“And yet,” says Darren, crisp, then, “Jesus, Geoffrey, what do I have to do to get you out of my life? Your fucking  _blood_  is all over the floor of some hellhole and we fucking  _buried_  you yesterday, and I think I would have remembered you clambering back out of the coffin, although that seems like the sort of shit you’d love, proving how  _clever_  you are to everyone. You’re like the fucking rash that just  _won’t quit_ , it’s simply impossible.”  
  
“Was there a point lurking inside that tirade, Darren?” says Geoffrey, raising an eyebrow, “What do you want me to do? File a complaint? Get sent to haunt someone else? You can’t imagine for a second that  _I_  am thrilled about this. I did hope that death would result in more than having to listen to you showboat until I gave up and tried to kill myself all over again--”  
  
“Fuck  _off_ ,” says Darren, finally dropping his bag on the floor, “you know, it’s of no surprise to me that you are as tactless in death as you were in life, but do  _not_  make jokes about that. Not  _ever_.”  
  
“Why,” says Geoffrey, that eyebrow climbing higher, “I’ve hit a nerve. But why would  _you_ , Darren Nichols, give a flying fuck about the fact that I opened my veins in a dirty bedroom without a suicide note at the tender age of forty-two--”  
  
“Shut up,” says Darren, and, leaving his bag on the floor, walks out of the room and locks the door behind him. He doesn’t look through the glass in the door, because there are some things that he doesn’t want to face. (That he doesn’t want to have to know, even if he did.)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Geoffrey’s  _Hamlet_  is a mess. Darren is charitable, in the privacy of his own head, because he can afford to be: it isn’t really Geoffrey’s fault. That American boy can barely manage to remember to say two lines one after the other, and Oliver’s dirty little fingerprints are all over much of the staging. There’s next to nothing of Geoffrey in it, probably nothing at all now that Ellen’s gone. (She’ll be back, but only to raise hell, the way she always is. Darren never had Geoffrey’s tolerance for her, and he’s half hoping that he’s wrong, that she’ll never come back. He can only keep his vindictiveness in check up to a point.)  
  
There’s next to nothing of Geoffrey in this Hamlet, and Darren, leans back in his seat, shiny leather boots on the back of the seat in front of him, and starts to see sense in those wounds that Geoffrey’s mortician had to stitch up with invisible thread. It’s the kind of thought that Darren didn’t really think people had, not in real life, but he’s spent his whole life in the theatre, knows he should know better. If art reflects life, sometimes life reflects art.  
  
Geoffrey Tennant  _was_  art. It’s a great shame, Darren thinks, that no one thought to inform  _Geoffrey_  of that fact.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Shut up,” says Geoffrey, before Darren has had the chance to say anything at all. Darren laughs, despite himself, says, “Oh, did you think I wouldn’t notice? How charmingly moronic of you, Geoffrey. It’s fucking  _terrible_.”  
  
“Well,” hisses Geoffrey, perched, out of place, on the end of Darren’s hotel room bed, “I fucking  _killed myself_  over it, thank you, I noticed, no need to rub it in.”  
  
“You know, I don’t think you did,” says Darren, because he doesn’t, really. He knows Geoffrey in the way you can only ever know someone whose fate is inextricably intertwined with yours, whether you like the idea or not. Geoffrey Tennant was - is - many things, arrogant, beautiful, capable of drinking Darren under the table, but he’s never  _simple_.  
  
“I don’t think I  _asked_  you,” says Geoffrey, and it’s almost a snarl, and it’s the first thing that’s made Darren think that maybe Geoffrey really  _is_  there, maybe he really isn’t just a hop-skip-swan-strangle away from being committed. He would never have predicted such an open-ended statement to enrage Geoffrey so obviously.  
  
“Fucking Christ,” mutters Darren, “you’re really here, aren’t you?”  
  
Geoffrey smirks, the one that always means trouble, and once meant  _duel_ , and quite a few times meant-- but Darren’s not thinking about  _that_ , and Darren sits down on the bed beside him, and just, well, sits.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“You need Ellen back,” says Geoffrey, when Darren wakes up, rubbing at his eyes, to find Geoffrey sitting in the chair beside his bed. The strangeness hits Darren, then, because he’s woken up countless times to Geoffrey giving him orders, to Geoffrey already awake and pacing, manic. He’s always looked terrible, his hair wild, his fingers in it, twisting, but this Geoffrey looks exactly the same, the same grey knit sweater, the same rumpled shirt and dark coat. His hair is wild, but it doesn’t ever change, messy as hell, but always in exactly the same place. Darren knows instinctively that no breeze will ever ruffle those curls. Darren knows it, and it’s the only excuse he can give for what happens next: he starts to cry.  
  
“Oh,  _fuck_ ,” says Geoffrey, but he sounds more than a little sorry, for which Darren feels viciously glad; he should. This is all Geoffrey’s fault, somehow. Most of the bad things that have happened to Darren in his life have been, somehow.  
  
“I know we do,” says Darren, wiping frantically at his eyes with the back of his hand, “but shut the fuck up, I’d like a minute when I wake up when I don’t have to deal with the ghost of  _Geoffrey fucking Tennant_ , thank you very much. I know I said that you died without tact but I was rather hoping that they gave you some sort of haunting etiquette lessons.”  
  
“They did not,” says Geoffrey, with great finality, and when Darren glances over at him, he’s smiling, unreadable. Darren really isn’t sure whether or not that’s a good sign.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“You are all fucking terrible,” Darren announces to the company, without preamble. They deserve to know it, and he didn’t come here to pull his punches. They don’t have a leg to stand on to argue, either, because Geoffrey would have said that, too.  
  
“Uh,” says Jack, the talentless American that Geoffrey had apparently been forced to cast as Hamlet. Darren narrows his eyes; he’s sure this boy knows nothing of Brecht.  
  
“You most of all,” says Darren, folding his arms, ignoring the looks of pure hatred he’s being given by every single person in the room, “but no matter. In honour of the late, great, man I love to hate, Geoffrey Tennant, I shall permit you to use the Stanislavski system. If that won’t fix you, darling, nothing will.”  
  
“The what--” begins Jack, and Darren narrows his eyes, very dangerously, and Jack closes his mouth. Darren smirks, and pretends that he can’t see Geoffrey sitting in the front row, looking murderous, chewing on his fucking razorblade once more. Darren pretends because Geoffrey doesn’t have a leg to stand on, either, and not just because he’s dead. There’s little else to be done in this situation, so Darren’s going to do it. It probably won’t work, anyway, but it’s no skin off his nose. After all, if he has to move to Berlin, maybe Geoffrey can’t follow him across oceans.  
  
He very carefully does not think about why he hasn’t already tried to find that out.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“You are such a hack,” says Geoffrey, his eyes wild with fury when Darren closes his office door and motions for Oliver to sit down.  
  
“An interesting move,” says Oliver, his face carefully blank, and Darren knows that he’s going to have to tread lightly, not least because Geoffrey hisses, “Oh, God. I  _am_  in Hell. I’m going to have to watch the two of fucking you talk about theatre forever, this was everything I was trying to get away from, Jesus  _Christ_.”  
  
“Well, perhaps the universe has a sense of humour,” says Darren, because it’s almost a response to both things that have just been said to him, but isn’t really a response to either of them.  
  
“I wasn’t aware that  _you_  had one,” says Geoffrey, but he, too, is waiting to see what Oliver says, because Darren knows what happens when Oliver looks that studiedly blank, and what happens is usually something you very much do not want to have happen to  _you_.  
  
“I am somewhat concerned that you cannot pull it off,” says Oliver, and Darren lets himself sigh, just a little. Oliver has always had a sort of cunning, and if someone was to recognise how far down the pole of sanity Darren suspects he’s slipped, his money would be on Oliver.  
  
“Shouldn’t have hired me, then,” says Darren, and he’s only smirking a little, “but, oh, what can one do?”  
  
Oliver leaves in his typical, affected, and entirely expected huff, and Geoffrey laughs, says, “You know, that was actually quite entertaining.”  
  
“Yes, well,” says Darren, glancing up to where Geoffrey sits, on the side of the desk, “it helps if you’ve never fucked him, of course.”  
  
Darren only looks away for a second, but Geoffrey’s gone. Apparently ghosts can storm off in a huff, too.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Darren has an entire day of silence, because the two other people who care the most about this play are sulking. Perhaps he should’ve done this from the beginning, it was, after all, foolish to assume that even the ravenous maw of death could prevent Geoffrey from having one of his legendary  _episodes_. Darren wonders if he should be thankful that Geoffrey has thus appeared non-corporeal, or merely just concerned. He knows Geoffrey because he’s  _like_  Geoffrey, and Geoffrey would not reveal all his tricks so early because  _Darren_  wouldn’t, either. Darren’s a theatre director, he knows all hauntings have to start with a death, but he also knows that many hauntings  _end_  with one, too.  
  
He puts nothing past Geoffrey, not after that time with one of his earliest solo productions,  _Krapp’s Last Tape_ , and that sudden and unexpected trapdoor. Death has done little to temper Geoffrey’s fire, and if Darren is very honest with himself, he’s not surprised at all. Geoffrey is the sort of man born to die, but he’s also the sort of man born to be dead.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Oh, of fucking  _course_ ,” says Darren, when he comes home and Geoffrey answers the question of incorporeality without being asked.  
  
“Why do you have so much Brecht?” says Geoffrey, sitting in the middle of Darren’s luggage, rummaging with a very serious expression on his face, “And why are they are all in Swedish?”  
  
“Scandinavians love Brecht,” says Darren, scowling, “they understand me there. Get out of my luggage. And my hotel room, if you can manage it.”  
  
“Of course I can manage it,” says Geoffrey, grinning, “but they gave you my play, so I’m your shadow and I’m not even a little bit sorry.”  
  
“Shadows are, traditionally, silent,” Darren observes, viciously, and Geoffrey gives Darren the look he usually gives him before insulting his imagination, says, “Ghosts aren’t. Honestly, Darren, have you never actually read anything not written for the stage? Or do you just take in information through osmosis? I mean, it’s the only explanation for judging pants with that many pink sequins a wise decision--”  
  
“You died in a  _bathrobe_ ,” says Darren, before he can stop himself, and Geoffrey frowns, says, “Did I? It sounds like the kind of thing I’d do. Do you know, I don’t actually remember?”  
  
Geoffrey is lying. Darren knows that Geoffrey is lying, and he also knows that Geoffrey does not know that he knows. Darren does something he has almost never done: he takes pity on another human being, and says, “I’ll tell you about blocking if you fucking leave the room while I’m asleep this time.”  
  
“Deal,” says Geoffrey, and Darren is thankful that Geoffrey’s never worked out how easy the theatre makes him, thankful that not even death has stopped up that well. Darren flips open his notebook, and pretends not to notice how hungry Geoffrey’s eyes fall on the page. Kindness, then. How new.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Let’s play questions,” says Geoffrey, and Darren doesn’t move a muscle. He suspects that this is how it’s going to work; Geoffrey’s going to follow him around until he goes mad, or kills himself, or both. He wonders if they’d have to spend eternity together, then. He wonders if it’d make any difference.  
  
“I don’t like the lights,” says Darren, because he’s sitting right in front of the stage with the whole company around him and desperate muttering was always Geoffrey’s schtick, anyway.  
  
“One-love,” says Geoffrey, like they’re in fucking  _Stoppard_ , and Darren rolls his eyes, says, “Could you possibly project a little more, Jack? Or is this part of your cunning plan to ensure that the audience cannot hear a word you say?”  
  
“Maybe you should try and encourage him, rather than kicking him in the metaphorical nuts,” says Geoffrey, fiddling with his cuff, “has it occured to you that it might produce more positive results?”  
  
“As opposed to what?” hisses Darren, in an undertone, bending over his notebook to mask his lips moving, “Convince him that he’s a fucking actor who can, I don’t know,  _act_?”  
  
“Didn’t you used to be an actor?” says Geoffrey, and Darren knows  _exactly_  what he means, and how that’s an insult, shoots back, “Didn’t you used to  _matter_?”  
  
“I don’t know, how long have I been dead?” says Geoffrey, flippant, which Darren can tell without even trying isn’t what Geoffrey means at all. He also knows that Geoffrey does not know the answer to that question, and isn’t sure if telling him will make that worse or better.  
  
“Not fucking long enough,” he says, as quietly as he can, and Geoffrey raises an amused eyebrow, says, triumphant, “Two-love.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“What the fuck have you done to the stage?” says Geoffrey, three long, long hours later.  _Darren_  isn’t even sure what he’s done to the stage, except that Oliver’s pillars and columns and period set dressings are all out. The backdrop is plain neon yellow and there’s a giant statue of a skull, covered top to toe in red fairy lights. It’s either Darren’s greatest stroke of genius or a severe fire hazard, once you throw in all the pyrotechnics he’s going to use for the ghost. Of course Geoffrey hates it. Maybe it isn’t a fire hazard, or genius, but both. Maybe Darren should really just fuck off back to Paris. Maybe he should just re-dress the whole stage. These questions are becoming more frequent, and much harder to answer.  
  
“ _Jesus Christ_ ,” says Geoffrey, in a tone that has traditionally meant a rapier is about to make itself known near Darren’s face, “why don’t you just fucking do it on a bare stage? It’d have to be better than this.”  
  
Something clicks in Darren; he knows not what. He cocks his head, rearranges his scarf, says, “Ha, you think that was sarcasm. Charming. Yes, why not?”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“I wasn’t serious,” says Geoffrey, but Darren knows that tone. It means that Darren has done something that Geoffrey considers to have been: a) an accident, b) really of Geoffrey’s own doing, and c) something Geoffrey really wishes that he’d thought of himself.  
  
“I know you weren’t,” says Darren, smug, “that is what is making you so fucking bad-tempered. Even when you’re dead, you still think I’m a hack. Well, you’re dead, and you’re still as close-minded as ever.”  
  
“Pretentious asshole,” mutters Geoffrey, his eyes glued to where Darren is rearranging Oliver’s miniature stage, and Darren laughs, says, “Such bad grace, Geoffrey. You’d think I’d pissed on something onstage, they way you’re carrying on.”  
  
“Well, one time, you  _did_ ,” says Geoffrey, and Darren shrugs, because, well,  _true_.  
  
“I can’t remember the last time I stayed up all night blocking something,” says Darren, and Geoffrey smiles, says, like it’s anything like the correct response, “I don’t need to sleep anymore. It’s a relief, really.”  
  
“You shock me,” says Darren, because Geoffrey has been allergic to sleep the entire time Darren’s known him, and Geoffrey smiles wider, says, “It’s funny, though. I still have moods.”  
  
“Well, that makes no fucking sense,” says Darren, distractedly dismantling the backdrop, “you don’t have brain chemistry anymore. You don’t have a  _brain_.”  
  
“Takes one to know one,” says Geoffrey, because he is a  _child_ , and Darren doesn’t even care. This is why he went into theatre, to be so driven by something, to  _make_  something, that he doesn’t even remember that he needs to sleep. He used to see it in Geoffrey’s eyes all the time, and hate him for it. It came so easily to him, he of the eternally exalted text. But Geoffrey’s eyes are on Darren’s hands, now, and something-- something has shifted. It’s just, for the life of him, Darren doesn’t know what.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“There will be no fire,” says Darren, which is not a sentence he has said since he had the ability or funds to procure something that can burn. (That has been a very,  _very_  long time.)  
  
“Er, okay,” says Richard, and Darren narrows his eyes. Darren still hasn’t quite grasped at what drove Geoffrey away, but he doesn’t think it was this man, so ignorant of his field and so utterly dependent on his directors, even when his directors, as Geoffrey patently had, already have enough weight to carry.  
  
“ _Indeed_ , says Darren, and leans back into his chair until Richard leaves, his eyes still wide.  
  
“Ugh,” says Geoffrey, leaning against the wall, that fucking razorblade out  _again_ , “that man has absolutely no feelings for the theatre.”  
  
“I believe he professes admiration for Gilbert and Sullivan,” says Darren, because he enjoys needling Geoffrey even if Geoffry is, technically, dead, and beyond the reach of all needles.  
  
“Oh, fuck off,” says Geoffrey, his nose wrinkled, “don’t be vulgar.”  
  
Darren smirks and opens his notebook. No fire; a bare stage; the text. Oh,  _fuck_.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Here’s the thing about Darren Nichols: he isn’t a hack. He knows that Geoffrey always thought that -- thinks? oh, who even knows -- but Geoffrey’s box was very small, and, in the end, only had room for one. (And isn’t  _that_  a nasty joke?) Geoffrey was a genius, and genius is genius, is blinding, is everything, but it is also  _limited_. Genius does not permit others because it does not  _see_  others, genius does not understand why everyone cannot see what it can see. Genius renders the impossible and the sacred  _obvious_ , and it was obvious more to no one Darren’s ever known than it was to Geoffrey Tennant.  
  
Darren Nichols is not Geoffrey Tennant, and, somewhere deep down, he knows he is not a genius. But genius is rare, rarer than diamonds and first folios and perfect sunrises, and there is no shame in not being something almost no one is. (Even if he used to think there was; even if he used to hate.) Darren Nichols is not a genius, but he is not an idiot, either. Darren Nichols has a genius on his shoulder, and silver leather pants in his suitcase. Darren Nichols is not a genius, but he’s fucking  _here_ , try and ignore him now.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“The boy’s the problem,” says Geoffrey, and Darren sighs, says, “What do you want me to do? Kill him? One fucking ghost following me around is already more than enough, thank you.”  
  
“Well, you  _could_  do that,” says Geoffrey, dripping sarcasm, “or you could, I don’t know, coach him? Like a  _director_  does?”  
  
“You mean like  _you_  would,” says Darren, contemptuously, “you know fine well, Geoffrey, that if you cannot endure a minor nervous breakdown then you cannot work for me.”  
  
“I worked for you,” says Geoffrey, sitting down on Darren’s bed, his eyebrow raised, and Darren glares at him as he viciously pulls off his socks, says, “I said  _minor_.”  
  
“Touché,” says Geoffrey, with only a hint of bitterness, and Darren sighs, lies down on the bed beside him, says, “What did you do with the little pissant?”  
  
“Mostly?” says Geoffrey, his face twisting into something almost a smile, “I was drunk at him.”  
  
“Oh, you shock me,” says Darren, dully, but the thing is, he  _does_. He’s known Geoffrey to drink when miserable, and he’s known Geoffrey to drink when happy, but he’s never known Geoffrey just to  _drink_. He’s long been sure that depressants should not be Geoffrey’s drug of choice, (God only knows how many loose screws alcohol  _un_ screwed), but he’s also long been sure that Geoffrey would never be the sort of man who’d end up choosing it above all else. He glances to the man beside him on the bed, and almost sees a stranger. But that’s the other thing: almost.  
  
“Well, you did suffer sophomore year with me,” says Geoffrey, and Darren smiles, despite himself. “Suffer” might not be his verb of choice, but indeed.  
  
“I think I suffered more than you,” says Darren, archly, and remembers tears at midnight and scholarship money that was only  _just_  enough, the look on Geoffrey’s face when he won Iago, Geoffrey’s face when someone, for the first time in his life, called him “crazy” as an insult and meant it. Darren remembers a lot of things about Geoffrey Tennant, and he isn’t sure which of them are relevant. He isn’t sure _any_  of them are.  
  
“If that’s what they’re calling it these days,” says Geoffrey, incredulous, and Darren is suddenly very conscious of the space between his thigh and Geoffrey’s waving hands. Of course it’s not what they’re calling it these days, but Darren wasn’t even sure what they were calling it in  _those_  days, because almost-four-years is a long time, but Darren never asked, and Geoffrey never answered. (Or should that be the other way around?) Of course it’s not what they’re calling it these days, but the God-Darren-doesn’t-believe-in (but--) help-him, he still doesn’t want to ask.  
  
“As if you’d know,” Darren settles for, instead, and Geoffrey’s hands clench into the bedsheets, automatic, and then he grins.  
  
“As if  _you’d_  know, either,” he says, and Darren opens his mouth to answer, but Geoffrey’s gone. (Apparently he still loves his dramatic exits, too.)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Darren smokes a cigarette in the grey morning light, mercifully alone, (and not only because he’s naked.) He supposes that in fiction he’d be haunted by nightmares, but he’s not. His sleep was black and dreamless, and it has been since the phone call from Oliver. No dreams of murder and rotting and razorblades for him. No, Darren’s just plain haunted.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Jack,” says Darren, injecting as much venom into his voice as possible, (which, seeing as it’s Darren, is a lot), “my office.  _Now_.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Fucking  _fix_  this,” hisses Geoffrey, into Darren’s ear, and Darren is glad that he can pass off the ensuing facial tic as  _rage_ , and he smiles, nasty, leans back in his chair, says, “Who told you that you can act?”  
  
“Um,” says Jack, and Darren waves a hand in perfect tandem with one of Geoffrey’s snorts of fury, says, “It doesn’t matter. You are the crux of this play, the performative identity around which Elsinore crumbles or no. Elsinore does crumble, of course, but you are the chief signifier of this to the audience-- in you, we see degeneration laid bare. You  _are_  what is rotten in the state of Denmark.”  
  
“I-- what,” says Jack, and Geoffrey  _barks_  with anger, “Fucking--  _no_! Oh my God, Darren, can you even hear yourself, you hack, the, you,  _signifiers_ , I am rolling in my grave right now if there is any justice in the world--”  
  
“Shut up,” says Darren, to what is, to Jack, an empty room.  
  
“But I wasn’t--” says Jack, unwisely, and Darren says, “I could hear you thinking, and it was fucking awful. Stop it. Stop thinking. Why do you want to play Hamlet?”  
  
Geoffrey looks up from where he was leaning against the wall, his head in his hands, his eyes narrowed. Darren is onto something, and they both know it.  
  
“Because my agent said it would be good for me?” says Jack, looking uncomfortable, and Darren rolls his eyes, says, “Your agent is a moron. Get a new one. But if that’s the only reason why, I am cancelling this play. I can get a plane back to the continent tomorrow. Once I cancelled an  _Othello_  because Desdemona wouldn’t dye her hair, don’t doubt that I would cancel this shitshow for much less--”  
  
“Because I’m never good enough,” blurts out Jack, clearly surprised by it himself. Geoffrey flinches like he’s been hit, and Darren smirks, knows he’s won.  
  
“Ever thought about, oh, I don’t know, fucking  _using it_  it in your performance?” says Darren, and Geoffrey’s eyes are on him, hot, and Darren thinks,  _I forgot how this felt, triumph_ , and it takes a whole minute to shake himself out of it.  
  
“No?” says Jack, querulous, and Darren says, “Can we get your fucking desk ornament of an agent to send us clippings of your bad reviews? Let me be clear:  _that wasn’t a question_.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Oh, fuck,” says Darren, when he walks into the lighting booth to find Anna crying. He wouldn’t dream of saying  _sorry_ , Darren Nichols doesn’t say  _sorry_ , but it’s there, stuck in his throat, anyway.  
  
“You are not Maria,” he says, stupidly, and Anna gives him what is, for her, a look of pure disdain, and says, “Could you-- could you just go, please?”  
  
“Is it about Geoffrey?” says Darren, because apparently he isn’t Darren Nichols today, but someone else, who cares about crying women and wants to discuss his nemesis of twenty years with someone who couldn’t even begin to know what Geoffrey was to Darren. (Ha. As if  _Darren_  knows.)  
  
“Yes,” says Anna, choked, and Darren feels something itch at the back of his neck, which might be Geoffrey’s eyes on him, but might just be the recognition of someone else’s all-too-familiar grief.  
  
“I miss him,” says Darren, does not say  _too_ , because Anna’s  _too_  cannot even begin to compare to Darren’s. Darren does not have bad dreams, but he still wakes up with that same hole in his chest, anyway.  
  
“He hated you,” says Anna, evidently before she can stop herself, then, “oh, God, I’m sorry--”  
  
“Yes, he did,” says Darren, leaning against the table, “but Geoffrey dealt only in extremes, didn’t he? What is it that Hamlet says?”  
  
Anna’s face pales as she gets it, (she’s always been better educated than Richard, Darren thinks distantly), says, very quietly, “I did love you once/I loved you not.”  
  
“That would be the one,” says Darren, his eyes on the floor, and Anna starts to cry again, says, “I-- I never thought, but, I, the way he treats Ellen, and Oliver, it never occurred to me that it’s so--”  
  
“Similar?” says Darren, ending what was clearly going to be a very painful sentence for him to hear. “I’m not sure even Geoffrey knew, nutcase that he was.”  
  
It’s good to know that Darren can still lie when he has to, especially when Anna says, “Did you ever tell him?”  
  
“No,” says Darren, the lie thick and bitter on his tongue, “and I’m fucking glad.”

 

 

 

“You fixed it,” says Geoffrey, the light of a future Darren can’t see (damn him, better, always better) shining in his eyes, and Darren pauses in brushing his teeth, says, “It was that or buy a gun.”  
  
“You know, I thought about that,” says Geoffrey, from where he sits, on Darren’s closed toilet lid, and Darren has to force himself not to shudder, but because he can’t help himself, “It would have hurt less. Always the flagellant, never the bride, Geoffrey.”  
  
“Ha,” says Geoffrey, dull, and rolls up his sleeves, says, “look. They weren’t there before, I’m sure of it.”  
  
Darren looks at the red, open wounds on Geoffrey’s arms and swallows, hard. There is absolutely no blood but no sign of the mortician’s thread, either. The lines are proficient, if occasionally wobbly. (It’s almost comforting to know that Geoffrey’s hands were shaky even in--) They’re right down the veins, not remotely a cry for help.  _The real thing_ , thinks Darren, aching,  _when people say ‘the real thing’, this is what they’re talking about_.  
  
“What does it mean?” says Darren, even though he can’t think of a question he’s ever wanted an answer to less.  
  
Geoffrey shrugs, because apparently death makes one laissez-faire about giant open wounds in your flesh.  
  
“No idea,” he says, and Darren just has no idea himself what to say to that. What he  _does_  say is probably worse.  
  
“What’s it like?” he says, because he’s always opened pandora’s boxes, he’s always pushed things that bit too far, “Being dead?”  
  
Geoffrey frowns, like that’s a question that needs real consideration, as if he’s not had more than enough time to think about it. (Maybe he has and maybe he hasn’t. Both would be very Geoffrey things to do.)  
  
“Cold,” he settles on, finally, “cold and hard to care.”  
  
“I struggle to believe either of those states could ever apply to you,” says Darren, arch, and Geoffrey shrugs again, says, “There is a veil, you know. Between death and life. You can’t see it.”  
  
“Yes, you always have to be the superior one,” says Darren, to drown out the howling in his head, “and so dramatic. I’m surprised you didn’t say ‘shroud’.”  
  
“I don’t think I had one of those,” says Geoffrey, and Darren has to look away, because he didn’t. They buried Geoffrey Tennant in his best and only suit, that he’d stolen from the props cupboard after a stellar performance in  _Death of a Salesman_ , a play he hadn’t even  _liked_. He hadn’t even liked it, but he’d made a good third of the audience cry every night. Darren thinks that the dichotomy at the centre of Geoffrey Tennant, that, that’s  _it_.  
  
“You looked fucking terrible,” says Darren, because he did, in his way. You can say a lot of things about Geoffrey Tennant, but you can’t ever say he stood  _still_. That was the worst part. Seeing him eternally, inescapably stilled. Geoffrey was not a person who was ever supposed to be still, who vibrated with energy even when frozen. What use is a nemesis who gives up? Geoffrey was unstoppable force and immovable object both, but only because he’d once been moved, once been stopped. (Leaping into a grave, they all fall down.) Geoffrey isn’t even still now, flicking through the pages of a filched copy of _Much Ado_. (Except he is. Except--)  
  
“Fuck you, too,” intones Geoffrey, and Darren snatches the book from his fingers, toothpaste flying through the air, hisses, “I hate you, you know.”  
  
“Oh, as do I,” says Geoffrey, grabbing the edge of the book and  _pulling_ , “desperately.”  
  
“Good,” says Darren, throwing the book at the wall, and storms off to bed. He pulls the covers over his head, and reminds himself, for the thousandth time, that you can tell yourself you don’t love someone all you like, it doesn’t make it  _true_.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“I think I want Ellen back,” says Darren, musingly, to Anna, in the morning, because that had seemed important once.  
  
“I--” says Anna, and that’s when Darren realises. This isn’t one of those things where you can just snap your fingers and get your own way. Ellen is as unstable as Geoffrey always was, in her way. This is not how it works. This is not how any of this works.  
  
“Shut your mouth, I didn’t mean you,” says Darren, throws his scarf over his shoulder, and leaves.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Oh, Jesus,” says Ellen, when she opens the door, “Oliver must have lost his mind.”  
  
“Don’t all the men you love do that?” says Darren, his hands shoved into his pockets, “It’s fucking freezing out here, can you at least insult me inside?”  
  
“Ugh,” says Ellen, and throws the door open, leaving Darren to close it. (She must always be in control of her environment, after all.)  
  
Ellen sits down in an armchair, and Darren notices for the first time how hollowed-out she looks. Her hair is unbrushed and there is a small bruise on the inside of her right wrist. She follows every movement Darren makes with her eyes, but she’s pretending she isn’t. There’s something of Geoffrey in her eyes, Darren thinks, and that is not a good sign at all.  
  
“Come back or I’m cancelling the play,” says Darren, because emotional blackmail has long been his first resort. It might, he supposes, be a last resort for other people, who are not Darren, but other people are either more patient than him or considerably more empathetic.  
  
“As if I care,” says Ellen, wrapping a throw around her shoulder and wrinkling her nose. Ellen is, of course, an excellent actress, but she’s evidently too tired to try any more. She cares. It is, in fact, possibly the only thing she cares about.  
  
“You care,” says Darren, because he’s spent most of his life playing this part, (and what part  _is_  that?), and he’s not going to stop now.  
  
Ellen shifts uncomfortably in her chair, and Geoffrey’s hand is hovering next to her face. If Ellen’s eyes are Geoffrey’s, then Geoffrey’s--  
  
“ _Fuck_ ,” says Darren, his mask slipping, and isn’t it typical that Ellen couldn’t be bothered to put on shoes, but that,  _that_  she catches.  
  
“What are you looking at?” she says, glancing to where Darren’s eyes linger, just over her right shoulder.  
  
“I’m trying not to look at you,” hisses Darren, which is cruel, even for him, and something in Ellen, for want of a better word,  _shifts_.  
  
“Geoffrey told me, once, you know,” she says, and Darren stiffens. There are quite a few things that she could be referring to, but he is absolutely certain it’s just the one.  
  
“He told me that he saw his dead father when you were in bed together, is that true?” says Ellen, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, and sees everything she needs in Darren’s frozen face. “Jesus, Darren. I know Geoffrey was a bit  _off_ , but--”  
  
“You have no fucking idea,” says Darren, because really, she doesn’t. They knew each other when they were both naked, in every sense of the word, before they were really  _them_. Darren before the legend of Darren Nichols, Geoffrey before the wide-eyed reaction merely speaking his name aloud could provoke. Darren remembers coming home to find Geoffrey standing over the sink, pushing the tines of a fork into his wrist, the tap on, making his blood run pink. Darren remembers Geoffrey crying all night, Geoffrey not sleeping for four days, Geoffrey with just a sliver of the self-confidence he would one day possess, but all that genius itching beneath his skin, nevertheless. A Geoffrey who hadn’t quite learned to be fearless, a Geoffrey who’d never had anyone to teach him to be kind. Geoffrey, who’d shared a bed with Darren for four years, a bed that everyone who knew them thought would be forever, give or take a few stitches and dramatic break-ups and rapiers at dawn. Geoffrey, who was - is - if Darren is honest, the one utter, defining characteristic of Darren’s life.  
  
“I’m sure I do,” says Ellen, but there’s something uncertain in her eyes. (Darren’s glad, because there’s nothing more unlike Geoffrey Tennant than indecision.)  
  
Darren gives her his most horrible smile, and leaves without saying goodbye, shutting the door, or trying to drag Geoffrey with him. (Geoffrey leaves anyway. This is only a little bit of a surprise.)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“The play’s shit,” says Geoffrey, and Darren shrugs. This feels like a reversal. It feels like something  _important_. But mostly, it doesn’t feel like anything at all.  
  
“You’re dead,” says Darren, “why the fuck do  _you_  care?”  
  
“That’s the question, isn’t it,” says Geoffrey, as if that has great significance, as opposed to being a distraction mechanism that Darren knows all too well. (Geoffrey got away with it for six months, a very long time ago, before Darren realised that “acting deliberately manic and mysterious” just meant “I actually never read the Müller, but our professor is easily fooled if I just wave my hands around a lot.” He’s good at telling playing at manic from-- well. The other, more pressing, kind.)  
  
“Oh, fuck off,” says Darren, and turns back to his notes. (There’s something just outside the corner of his eye. There’s something-- but that’s  _Geoffrey_ , isn’t it?)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Ellen isn’t here, um, actually, I don’t think anybody is,” says Anna, too nervous to even make it a question.  
  
Darren stares her down until she leaves. He doesn’t need someone telling him things he already knows.  
  
“You really ought to--” says Geoffrey, and Darren throws a book at him, because if he doesn’t need people telling him things he already knows, he  _especially_  doesn’t need it when it’s Geoffrey.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“This isn’t going to be like your  _Winter’s Tale_ , is it?” says Geoffrey, and Darren laughs, says, “Is this going to be a dig about how I’m still bitter that I couldn’t get a real bear?”  
  
“You mean you’re not?” says Geoffrey, and Darren narrows he is eyes, because, okay, maybe he is. (Just a little.)  
  
“That’s beside the point,” says Darren, even if it isn’t, but, in a way, it is. Darren isn’t a hack, and he’s not an idiot, either. He knows enough to know that this play is not like his others, if he can rescue it from the shit Oliver dragged it through. It’s going to be different. It’s going to be  _new_.  
  
“As if you even remember my  _Winter’s_ ,” says Darren, and Geoffrey’s face goes very still.  
  
 _Oh_.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“The sink had a crack,” says Geoffrey, his legs up on the back of a seat. Darren is staring blankly at the stage, but he knows that even if he is grateful for the interruption, he shouldn’t show it.  
  
“That’s because you dropped a brick in it,” says Darren, because Geoffrey had. (Geoffrey had managed to convince Darren that he wasn’t aiming it at him. Darren’s parents were rather more of a challenge.)  
  
“Your father definitely thought I was going to murder you in your bed after that,” says Geoffrey, and Darren smiles despite himself, says, “I think he was more worried about the other things he imagined you doing in my bed.”  
  
“Well if his imagination was anywhere near as depraved as yours--” says Geoffrey, and Darren cuts him off, says, “Which it  _wasn’t_ , Geoffrey, look at who you’re talking to.”  
  
“Point,” Geoffrey concedes, then, “I rather miss that, you know.”  
  
“The sink? What for, the Dean never took us off his shitlist after that--” says Darren, but Geoffrey’s smiling, and it’s almost shy.  
  
“ _Christ_ ,” says Darren, “my  _imagination_? Or my  _bed_? God, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”  
  
“Oh, yes, you do,” Geoffrey mutters, and Darren snorts, turns back to the stage, ignores him.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Geoffrey opens his mouth and Darren holds up a hand, says, “Do not think to dare, Geoffrey, or I will make Ellen perform while  _on fire_.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Jesus fucking Christ, he’s late,” mutters Darren, “where the  _fuck_  is Jack?”  
  
“Ah, so close and yet so far,” says Geoffrey, from where he lies on the stage, chewing on that razorblade, making shadow puppets with his hands.  
  
“Why do you always have that razor, Geoffrey?” says Darren, which is not the thought that makes his stomach churn the most, but comes horribly close.  
  
“Have you noticed,” says Geoffrey, (because of  _course_  he’s not paying any attention), from his position on the floor, “that you haven’t seen the rest of the cast for, oh, at least three days?”  
  
“I--” says Darren, but something is different. Geoffrey always has a smart answer because Darren does; and Darren always has to be smart because he’s talking to  _Geoffrey_. But now-- now he doesn’t have a smart answer. Now he doesn’t have an answer at all.  
  
“Where do you think we are, Darren?” says Geoffrey, because-- oh, God. He’s known something Darren didn’t, this entire time. He  _knew_.  
  
“Oh,  _shit_ ,” says Darren, as the realisation hits him, and all the lights go out.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The lights do not come back on for some time. (The lights, if you like, do not, in fact, come back on  _at all_.)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Well, you could’ve fucking  _told_  me that we’re in Hell,” says Darren, at his obnoxious best, and Geoffrey shrugs, says, “Are we?”  
  
Darren opens his mouth, and then closes it again. He meant to argue, but he really doesn’t know, and it seems a futile thing to argue for the course you want least.  
  
“Purgatory, then,” he says, because they’re theatre directors. They know all about purgatory.  
  
“It’s like something from one of your plays,” says Geoffrey, and does not need to say the word  _absurd_.  
  
Darren notices, for the first time, that they’re both sitting at the very centre of the stage. ( _A_  stage. It certainly isn’t the stage at the Rose.) Facing them are empty seats, and no doors. He knows without looking that there are no exits to this theatre, and that there are also no entrances, too. The stage is bare, but there are lights. They flicker over his skin, and they are not at all hot.  
  
“For fuck’s sake,” says Darren, standing up, “they could’ve at least given us some chairs.”  
  
Geoffrey peers up at him, hands twisted into his matted hair, and begins to laugh.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“So what do we do?” says Darren, after some time has passed.  _Some_. Whatever  _that’s_  supposed to mean. (A worse thought:  _if anything_.)  
  
“I think perhaps this is a clue,” says Geoffrey, waving a hand at the stage, and Darren snorts, says, “Yes, I’m sure the universe decided that watching  _you_  act one last time was worth disrupting the space-time continuum, or whatever the fuck is going on here--”  
  
“You’re dead, Darren,” says Geoffrey, in the tone he keeps solely for earth-shattering revelations and all discussions of Hamlet’s motivations.  
  
“And you didn’t think to mention that?” says Darren, and he’d be ashamed about the way his voice was screeching if he didn’t hate Geoffrey so much in this moment he’d kill him all over again if only he wasn’t--  
  
“I didn’t know,” says Geoffrey, mildly, and Darren stops pacing, (has he been doing that for long?), and looks, really looks, at Geoffrey.  
  
Geoffrey really didn’t know. For some reason, Darren is surprised. He’s so used to Geoffrey always ( _thinking he knows, but--_ ) knowing everything, that him not knowing is--  
  
In that moment, Darren makes a decision.  
  
“He murdered us,” he says, sitting down on the edge of the stage, and he waits.  
  
Geoffrey doesn’t follow at first, resumes pacing where Darren left off, says, wild, “ _Who_? I rather distinctly recall murdering myself, and as for you, don’t look at me. I think the theatre itself choose to take its revenge. God, what you did to Gertrude--”  
  
“Twenty-seven,” says Darren, unperturbed, “three, and you think he might have had the edge? He  _murdered_  us.”  
  
“ _Oh_ ,” says Geoffrey, very quietly. It is almost ( _very_ ) grateful, and thick with emotion.  
  
“Darren,” he says, sitting down beside him, “you don’t have to, we don’t even know if it’d--”  
  
“Fucking catch up,” says Darren, “and don’t complain about my choice of play, we need something with two central speakers and I know how  _Godot_  brings out your ridiculous Stanislavkian heart in hives--”  
  
“ _Beckett_ ,” mutters Geoffrey, darkly, then, “we got his  _symptoms_ , didn’t we?”  
  
Darren smirks, a smirk that fades as he says words that, well, hit  _much_  too close to home, “Half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn’t mean anything at all.”  
  
Geoffrey’s smile is sad, but happily devoid of pity as he says, “Thwarted ambition—a sense of grievance, that’s my diagnosis.”  
  
Darren feels something clench in his chest as he skips some lines, says, “Denmark’s a prison.”  
  
 _And he’d rather live in a nutshell_ , he does not say,  _some shadow-play about the nature of ambition_.  
  
“Denmark’s a prison,” repeats Geoffrey, and he’s said those words before and meant them. (And not as his damned – laugh at the pun, yes – Hamlet, either.) Darren could have told that from his voice alone without ever having known Geoffrey.  
  
“You’re so naked when you act,” says Darren, which is not what he meant to say at all.  
  
“You’re quite the opposite,” says Geoffrey, without missing a beat, and lies back, his hands beneath his head, and begins to hum.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“We have no stage directions,” says Geoffrey, because he’s always known that they’re an obsession of Darren’s. (Darren loves Beckett for a reason, and it doesn’t really have anything to do with Theatre of the Absurd. To be filed under: a secret only Geoffrey knows.)  
  
Darren has given up on trying to measure anything, his world now centres on where Geoffrey’s chest rises and falls in manic staccato and calm larghissimo time. (And is that  _air_  he’s breathing?)  
  
“ _You_ , you pontificating bastard, have no audience,” says Darren, because he’s always known how to hit where it hurts.  
  
“Neither have you,” says Geoffrey, raising an eyebrow, and that’s when Darren realises,  _wrong on all counts_.  
  
“Let’s play questions,” says Darren, and Geoffrey laughs, says, “Ready when you are, Rosencrantz.”  
  
Geoffrey does not understand this game, not yet, he’s expecting a line and he’s not going to get one, which is why Darren says, “Why did you haunt me?”  
  
Geoffrey’s whole body goes still, and then he says, “Why did you come to my funeral?”  
  
“Did you see those  _masks_?” says Darren, incredulous, “Why didn’t you rise from your grave and  _murder_  Oliver, really, Geoffrey, what sort of ghost are you?”  
  
“I believe you mean  _were_  you, do you not?” says Geoffrey, and he taps his fingers on the edge of the stage, says, “Why did you take on my  _Hamlet_?”  
  
“Why not?” says Darren, which shouldn’t count but he doesn’t care, “Why did you kill yourself, Geoffrey? It wasn’t about the play, was it?”  
  
“Why do you think you’re dead?” says Geoffrey, turning as vicious as Darren knew he would if they played this game, “Murder? Accident? Do you think you don’t remember because you hate yourself for doing  _exactly_  what I--”  
  
“Tell me why you did it, Geoffrey,” says Darren, urgent, and Geoffrey stills again, more sinister this time, (it turns out he  _doesn’t_  need to breathe, after all), and closes his eyes, opens them again, and says, very precisely, “I don’t actually know the answer to that question, Darren.”  
  
“You’re  _Geoffrey Tennant_ ,” hisses Darren, “you know the answer to every question anyone ever asks you, even if you really don’t. Fucking hell, Geoffrey, it’s practically what you  _do_. No smart answer this time, then?”  
  
“No,” says Geoffrey, his eyes meeting Darren’s, “I actually don’t. I  _honestly_  don’t.”  
  
“For  _fuck’s sake_ , Geoffrey,” yells Darren, standing up and moving back, just a little, “people don’t do this! They don’t think, ‘oh, dear, my Hamlet’s a bit mumbly and my boss is a bit in love with me and I really should buy some new shirts, but you know what would be easier than trying to sort any of that out?  _Killing myself_!’ You seriously don’t expect me to believe--”  
  
“It was easier,” says Geoffrey, standing up, too, and rolling up his sleeves, “it might have been, as a matter of fact, the easiest thing I did in my entire life.”  
  
“Piss off, Geoffrey,” says Darren, backing away, “I don’t have to listen to this.”  
  
“You actually really do,” says Geoffrey, waving behind him at a doorless room, and--  
  
“They’re gone,” says Darren, dully. Geoffrey glances down, and they are, his arms are as clean and smooth as the last time Darren saw them in life.  
  
“I wonder if--” says Geoffrey, and apparently in an empty room in what might be Hell he  _can_  still make that razor blade appear from nowhere as if by magic, and Darren growls, “Don’t you fucking  _dare_.”  
  
“Aren’t you the least bit curious?” says Geoffrey, and Darren shudders, and derails Geoffrey the way he’s  _always_  derailed Geoffrey, says, “Well, shall we stretch our legs?”  
  
Darren blames the twenty years since his last performance of this for the fact that he’d forgotten how layered with innuendo his next line is, but judging by his grin, Geoffrey hasn’t.  
  
“I don’t feel like stretching my legs,” says Geoffrey, as his grin widens, his eyes locked on Darren’s face.  
  
That grin is a dare, and if Darren says his next line, he knows from years and years and  _years_ \-- he knows that the levee will break, and so Darren swallows, his throat suddenly very dry, (and isn’t  _that_ \--), says, “I’ll stretch them for you, if you like.”  
  
“Okay, then,” says Geoffrey, which does not resemble his line in any way whatsoever, and steps forward.  
  
“But what if we can’t--” says Darren, and Geoffrey kisses him.  
  
“So fucking  _what_  if we can’t, when have we ever played by the rules,” says Geoffrey, and moves his mouth to Darren’s neck.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
As it turns out, they can.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
They can, but. If time is not the same, then neither is space. Darren feels every time Geoffrey has ever touched him, and scars on his chest, scars that a rapier made, burn red, even as Geoffrey’s hands twist into his hair, even as Geoffrey bites, a hundred times or more, into his neck.  
  
“I always thought death would feel like nothing,” says Darren, and Geoffrey closes his hand around Darren’s cock, (and his mouth, and--), and Geoffrey huffs into Darren’s ear, “But isn’t this so much worse?”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Darren, at nineteen, and the proud owner of only one scarf, Geoffrey at twenty-five, and Prince Hal for the first time, Darren, at twenty, the first time he held Geoffrey’s hand in public, Geoffrey, at twenty-two, and crying in the snow, Darren, at thirty, and alone in a hotel room in Paris, Geoffrey, at twenty-seven, and security’s throwing him out of Darren’s  _Mother Courage_ , Darren, at thirty-five, and the most famous director in Germany, Geoffrey, at thirty-nine, and wouldn’t he like to be able to pretend that this was his first suicide attempt, Darren, at eighteen, and it’s the first time he’s ever seen the dark-haired boy that he’s just about to learn is Geoffrey Tennant--  
  
“What was I wearing before?” says Darren, picking at a faded blue scarf that he hasn’t seen since he was twenty-one.  
  
“I don’t know,” says Geoffrey, because of course he doesn’t. Geoffrey thinks of clothes the way most people think of their own immune system; necessary, but not really my area.  
  
“Because I am fucking certain I wasn’t wearing  _this_ ,” hisses Darren, and Geoffrey rubs at his scuffed black boots, raises an eyebrow, shrugs.  
  
“Philistine,” says Darren, and Geoffrey raises both eyebrows this time, takes it with good grace.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“I feel like I’m in your fucking interminable production of  _Waiting for Godot_ ,” says Geoffrey, which is rich, given that they must have spent at least four days waiting for a company that was never going to come to rehearsals.  
  
“Aren’t you?” says Darren, because it feels good to turn the tables. (Even if it doesn’t, not really. Not even a little bit. Not at all.)  
  
“Well, the lighting's better,” says Geoffrey, archly, and Darren pulls a face, and does not say the obvious, and not only because it does not need to be said. (They both know that their Godot is not coming, either.)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“You know, you were a terrible boyfriend,” says Geoffrey, and Darren flinches, and not only because Geoffrey has never used that word in reference to him before.  
  
“That’s entirely the wrong word, you bastard, and you know it,” says Darren, because, well, it is. (As if  _boyfriend_  could ever convey--)  
  
“Well, what is?” says Geoffrey, in that calm and reasonable way he has when he knows that you can’t answer his question and he has, by default, already won.  
  
“It just isn’t the right word,” says Darren, and then kicks Geoffrey in the shins for good measure. (Never mind that he knows Geoffrey likes a fight as a prelude to a good fuck. Never mind that at all.)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Why the fuck are we even still here?” says Darren, Geoffrey’s head in his lap, his scarf loose about his neck, “ _Ma pensée, c'est moi: voilà pourquoi je ne peux pas m'arrêter. J'existe parce que je pense… et je ne peux pas m'empêcher de penser_ , perhaps?”  
  
“You know how I feel about Sartre,” says Geoffrey, narrowing his eyes, and Darren does. Salt and burn.  
  
“I also know how you feel about untranslated French, but I don’t give a fuck about your feelings,” lies Darren, “and anyway, doesn’t ‘nothingness haunts being’ seem rather appropriate right about now?”  
  
“Hell is other people,” says Geoffrey, musingly, a line in a play he’d never sink to performing, then, with horrible clarity, “but what if Hell is just  _you_?”  
  
“Us, you mean,” says Darren, sharply, and Geoffrey closes his eyes, mutters, “Isn’t that what I said?”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Maybe it’s about regrets,” says Geoffrey, getting up and stretching muscles he will never use, “about what we never got to perform, and the like?”  
  
“Yes, I agree, that sounds  _very_  likely,” says Darren, vicious, “because I only spent my  _whole life_  performing, Geoffrey, at least you only had to do it on a stage.”  
  
“I have so many,” says Geoffrey, distant, missing the things he shouldn’t, the way he always has, sometimes, and then, silver flickering over his fingers, “this was the razor I killed myself with, you know.”  
  
Nothing moves in Darren, nothing clicks. This was something he already ( _always_ \--) knew.  
  
“And?” says Darren, holding out his hand, “Give it here, you sentimental bastard.”  
  
It is not cold in Darren’s hand, and it is not heavy, but simply  _is_ , and something in Darren has not changed, but something in Geoffrey has as he says, like a confession, “I would’ve liked to have seen your _Hamlet_.”  
  
“Me, too,” says Darren, because Darren Nichols is nothing if not arrogant, “but I’d have liked to have seen yours even more.”  
  
“I’ll see what I can do," says Geoffrey, and that wasn’t what Darren meant but  _exactly_  what he wanted, and Geoffrey launches into the first soliloquy as Darren laughs, before he can stop himself, delighted.  
  
Darren never had got to see the nervous-breakdown-in-progress that critics called Geoffrey’s magnum opus, anyway.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
They aren’t naked, because they are never ( _always_ \--) naked, but Geoffrey is smirking after some  _very_  good sex as he says, “You’re so fucking easy for the theatre, Darren.”  
  
Darren’s fingers flutter around a cigarette that isn’t there as he says, “Pot, meet kettle. I’d say that I’d like to have directed you, but--”  
  
Geoffrey smirks again, waves a hand, says, “You already did.”  
  
“And not just in bed, yes, I know, fuck you, Geoffrey,” says Darren, but he’s smiling as he says it, “and I’d like you to have directed me, but--”  
  
“I already did that at the one time in your life when you were open to direction?” says Geoffrey, his fingers tangling, languid, into Darren’s scarf.  
  
“Yes,” says Darren, because it really was that simple, when it all comes down to it.  
  
“I know,” says Geoffrey, speaking the words that they both know made his haunting redundant, (well, on  _one_  level), “I don’t think you have room in you for another director, Darren.”  
  
It’s Darren’s turn to smirk as he says, knowing how infuriating Geoffrey will find it, “ _Je ne regrette rien_ , darling.”  
  
And the thing is--  
  
\-- the thing is, in this perfect moment, he doesn’t, but even if he did, well, now he knows the secret. It’s  _okay_. It’s okay if he  _did_.  
  
Geoffrey’s eyes go very wide, and Darren’s a theatre director, so he knows purgatory when he sees it, but he knows catharsis when he sees it, too, and he sees it, clear in those dark, dark eyes, as Geoffrey swallows hard, says, “ _Fuck_. Oh,  _fuck_. Me-- me neither.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Love was the right word for it, wasn’t it?” says Geoffrey, his face the most naked Darren has ever seen it.  
  
They’ve found their light automatically, or the light has found them, cold on skin beneath which no heart beats--  _ah, an answer_ , thinks Darren, desperately, and because he is desperate, quips, “Well, there was a lot of swearing on God’s name and all that horseshit. Or was that the orgasms?”  
  
“Darren,” says Geoffrey, quietly and not-quite-chiding, and Darren turns to him, his eyes narrowed, their shoulders bumping together, their legs dangling off the edge of the stage, says, “Tenses?”  
  
Geoffrey smiles, not quite a smirk, entirely an answer, but the echo, too, of the genius there that’s had Darren mad for more than twenty years, and as the lights begin to dim Darren inches his hand until his littlest finger brushes Geoffrey’s thigh, and says, for he’ll make a show of it if capitulate he must, “And I--”


End file.
